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rbs is someone who really wants to live in a suburb but is living in a city against their will because they think it s better for the earth mostly when we make sweeping generalizations like suburbs are better than cities or that cities are better than rural areas we re just validating our own personal preferences because the truth is that there is no way for me to say what is better for you joe schmoe live where you are happy and do your best okay or do as good as you can considering we are all messy imperfect beings let s not talk about the sheer volume of plastic in my trash can now hope that clarifies things ruchi posted by ruchi at 11 23 pm 8 comments sunday april 24 2011 what does green mean ever since my last post on sustainable cities i ve been thinking what does sustainable mean anyway what does it mean to be green what is the point of earth day heavy stuff perhaps a lot of people associate being green with nature one person on jenn s original post about the suburbs versus cities argued that cities might be less green because they lacked yards to grow food or for children to play in which made me wonder is having a yard a green attribute the reality is that greens have a fairly incoherent relationship with well greens by which i mean ya know trees and shrubs and grass and dear little woodland creatures let s take yards yards are considered wonderful because they allow us to grow food and allow our children to play in nature enviros will take pictures of their gardens their fruit trees their flower bushes to show the world the beauties of nature yay yards let s build more yards but wait before we rush out to build yards we must remember that yards are terrible because they require so much water lawns are a waste of such a precious commodity also gardens hardly constitute nature because they are human constructed rows of heirloom tomatoes aren t natural nor are those peas growing on that human built trellis yards are not nature no to find nature we must go to yosemite or yellowstone or some other national park that s where nature is except that s not nature either look at all those stupid campers sitting there they are destroying the nature with their enjoyment of it look at them smugly sitting on that log they are sitting on nature nature is somewhere else somewhere where humans have never been the real nature the nature we need to save is actually the nature we ve never seen because if we see it we ruin it do you hear me we must save it from us stay away from the nature actually maybe those lawns aren t so bad but maybe instead of lawns we could just let our yards run wild except that hmmm then it might become nature and our kids couldn t play there alternately it might become filled with tumbleweeds and the local high school kid might smoke pot back there hmmm is pot nature ultimately this gets carried forward to the inevitable conclusion which generally results in ritual suicide because let s face it there d be a lot more nature around if humans were all dead kidding about the ritual suicide but the truth is there are greens who do think there d be a lot more nature if the human race went extinct personally i think there would be a lot more of somethings certainly there are some species that would multiply without humans and there are others that would probably die off without us but as for nature well i d argue that nature is a human construct without humans there is no nature the truth is that from the moment humans first roamed the earth we have had an impact on the non human world we shouldn t aim to separate ourselves from our world for a multiplicity of reasons and honestly we can t separate ourselves from the world we are humans we are nature and as oprah would say if we want to love and protect nature we are going to have to learn to love ourselves as part of nature first posted by ruchi at 11 26 pm 7 comments labels environment wednesday april 20 2011 in defense of the city a couple days ago jenn wrote a post asking whether cities were so much more sustainable than suburbs and of course it got me thinking the first thing i thought was well it depends which is pretty much the obvious answer and also my knee jerk response to just about everything i must be so annoying to read with my oh well it s complicated and my oh what we really need is institutional change blah dee f king blah can t i say anything definitive the truth is that sure some suburbs can be sustainable and if you want to live in a suburb you should do it and do your best in your situation but eff it i don t feel like writing the cities are great but suburbs are fine too post so instead i want to write a post about why cities are awesome because i live in a city and i think everyone should be like me validate me internets i ve lived in cities for most of my adult life i adore cities i think everyone should want to live in cities because cities are where the cool people meaning me live truthfully though none of the four cities i ve lived in has been perfect sustainability wise nor has my behavior been perfect in any of said cities in los angeles the weather is great meaning that you rarely turn on the heat or the a c but of course the public transit sucks so you drive everywhere in london the weather is pretty wet and miserable so the heat is on more often on the other hand the public transit is great new york is both cold and hot meaning a c in the summer and heat at night plus i m sorry but new york is terrible about waste forget about composting no one seems to even recycle san francisco is a green mecca with temperate weather and industrial city wide composting but the public transit still isn t great and also sorry but san francisco just isn t that awesome a city compared to la london or new york but there are many ways in which almost all cities excel most cities though not all have good public transit cities pack lots of people in dense areas and contrary to what some people have argued cities also have places to garden our neighborhood has two community gardens within walking distance places for kids to play they are called parks and playgrounds and they are better than backyards fer reals in some cities you even have space or rather space you are rarely going to get a five bedroom house in the city unless you are a gajillionaire but in some cities like los angeles and san francisco you can buy actual houses you will have to sell your right kidney on the black market to pay the down payment and your master bedroom will be the size of a medium sized walk in closet in suburbia but you will get your house maybe even with a garden and a deck for your dog to lay on my point is that cities where i live is awesome i am also awesome plus according to jonathan haidt author of the happiness hypothesis people s happiness is greatly affected by short commute times but overall happiness is actually relatively unaffected by having more space so if living in a city reduces your commute but living in a suburb gives you more space you might want to think about the city over the suburb but if you recoil at living in a city and love the suburbs then find a suburb where you can be happy ideally one with some public transit and one that is not too far from your work and don t worry about it because in the end when people claim that cities are more sustainable or suburbs are more sustainable or farms are more sustainable we re often just trying to validate the preferences we already hold posted by ruchi at 11 35 pm 11 comments labels sustainable living sunday april 3 2011 the risks of parenting i ve been mulling over a post that erin wrote a while ago about cherry picking science in it she admitted that though she sometimes can t believe that people don t trust the science behind climate change she doesn t always trust science herself even among those of us who love science our relationship with it can be quite fraught consider this article from the la times which notes that children using a rear facing car seat until age 2 are 75 less likely to die or suffer serious injuries in a car crash in spite of this seemingly overwhelming evidence the article notes that many parents have chosen to ignore the recommendations and are placing the car seats in a forward facing position why i can t speak for all those parents but there are several possible explanations one is that they are either scientifically illiterate or don t understand the risk as my friend abbie suggested when we recently debated this on facebook the other is that they do understand the risk and have decided that it s minimal enough that they choose to risk it now the latter might seem like a pretty absurd position to take given that the research shows that your child is 75 less likely to die in a crash if they are facing forward 75 that s huge right well sort of the reality is your child would be 100 less likely to die in a vehicular car crash if you never put them in a car but most people wouldn t consider that it s too difficult too inconvenient too absurd life involves risk everything we do involves risk driving to work drinking a beer eating a hamburger you could get mad cow dontcha know having sex flying on a plane no matter how you try you will never live a life that is 100 risk free and frankly sometimes it s better not to try because to try to live a life with as little risk as possible well you could do it but would you be really living at all according to the national highway traffic safety administration traffic fatalities in 2010 dropped to their lowest point since 1949 when there were a lot lot fewer cars on the road now according to the american association of pediatrics there are roughly 5 000 deaths in the u s among children and teenagers due to traffic fatalities each year the aap doesn t break down those deaths but according to some 2003 data by the national highway traffic safety administration about 1 500 children under fifteen died in 2003 due to traffic accidents and among one to three year olds the number of children dying annually from traffic accidents has declined from 1993 when about 600 children 1 3 year olds was killed to roughly 400 in 2003 are 400 deaths a year 400 too many yes are those 400 deaths utterly horrible for the parents involved yes but considering how much we americans drive it seems that dying in a car accident is a relatively uncommon event for 1 3 year olds now as abbie argued keeping a child rear facing an extra year is pretty painless so in some senses why not keep your kid rear facing an extra year even if the likelihood that your kid is going to die in an accident is small why take the risk and i ll be honest knowing all the numbers if i were a parent i think i would probably opt to keep my kid rear facing until they were two but the problem with parenting is that it seems to be a world filled with little and gradually diminishing risks yet it always seems like even those little risks are too big to take chances yes it s true that your child is unlikely to be kidnapped but why take the risk and let them play outside on their own yes it s true that you are extremely unlikely to get listeria but why take the risk and eat unpasteurized cheese when pregnant yes it s true that some germs are probably okay for your kid but why take the risk when you can purell purell purell ultimately life comes with risk it just does and the sooner we can accept that the better so if some parents think that keeping their kid in a rear facing car seat for another year is too onerous i understand posted by ruchi at 11 02 pm 12 comments labels science policy friday march 11 2011 and ode to bloggers gone by most long time bloggers are used to the unfortunate consequences of blogging the reality is blogging day in and day out is hard time consuming work and the majority of us do not get millions of dollars book deals or cars out of the bargain in fact most of us don t earn a single penny from blogging nor do we try to i think actually the majority of us mostly do this for the love of writing and for the community we grow and i think that for most of us bloggers love is enough reason to write except except that eventually you burn out life takes over transitions happen and it can be hard to continue blogging and once you get out of the groove it can be really really hard to find it again this blog being primary evidence of that truth and so most long time bloggers know that gradually a large number of their blog friends will vanish from blog land maybe they will start gradually dropping down to two three posts a week then it becomes two three posts per month and then they go a whole month without blogging until visiting their blog is no longer a comfortable part of your routine others simply decide to go at a designated time these blog euthanizers if you will shock at first what no more blog but perhaps in the end their blogs die a more merciful death than they would have it can be hard to be a blogger one s blog roll turns into a veritable blog obituary blogs defunct blogs ignored even worse blogs attacked by viruses occasionally you will reread the archives familiar things and you will feel like you are being wrapped in a warm comforting blanket but the feeling is fleeting and once in a great while a miracle on of your favorite blogs is resurrected hooray you cry of course at this point you have reconciled yourself to its death and you know just how hard it is to get back into blogging you have been trying for months with only limited success still you can t help but hope and remain happy for every last post you get in totally unrelated news green bean wrote about the enemy within i think you should read it posted by ruchi at 7 58 pm 11 comments labels blogging older posts home subscribe to posts atom about me sf bay area california view my complete profile the arduous past 2019 1 june 1 new blog 2011 19 july 1 april 4 march 1 february 5 january 8 2010 48 december 5 november 2 october 3 september 7 august 10 june 1 april 1 march 3 february 6 january 10 2009 139 december 13 november 1 october 15 september 2 august 11 july 12 june 13 may 12 april 7 march 19 february 14 january 20 2008 281 december 9 november 20 october 25 september 11 august 20 july 30 june 24 may 24 april 29 march 28 february 25 january 36 2007 78 december 24 november 31 october 23 in memoriam 1978 2008 park and bark fellow eco bloggers crunchy chicken 7 months ago my plastic free life the blog formerly known as fake plastic fish 7 years ago farmer s daughter 7 years ago green phone booth 10 years ago green bean dreams 11 years ago fellow policy wonks yale environment 360 as deforestation falls in brazil it surges in neighboring bolivia 2 days ago inequalities blog inequalities is moving to substack 2 years ago paul krugman the blog moves on 8 years ago dot earth after nine years and 2 810 posts a dot earth farewell 9 years ago environment george monbiot s blog guardian co uk glastonbury organis...